Wednesday, August 8, 2007

National Locomotion

"You get the feeling that God designed the canoe first and then set about creating a country in which it would flourish."

Bill Mason

"The CPR may have bound this nation together, but it is the canoe that first called it into being. The birchbark has been replaced, first by canvas and then by aluminum and fibreglass, but the symbolism remains. Paddling a canoe-why it's as Canadian as grilled cheese sandwhiches."

Will Ferguson

"What sets a canoeing expedition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other. Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute; pedal five hudnred on a bicycle and you remian basically bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you are already a child of nature"